I should make another post, probably
Well, I have been very busy, stuff-happening. Natty and I have been slaving away to put out the next issue of the Student Insurgent, which is especially hard after the whole printing-offensive-cartoons-of-naked-jesus-fiasco; we (Natty and I) have had to deal with a lot of shit and we weren't even responsible for it. It was such a big deal that we were contacted for interviews by CNN, FOX, Bill O'Reilly for his radio show, random right-wing talk radio, and a bunch of local media outlets, as well as getting on the local news. All for a few naked drawings of jesus, drawings which I thought were a little irrelevant and juvenile (and I had no idea people would actually be outraged by them!) The whole thing is mundane. I don't even want to talk about it anymore...but the next issue will rock (by comparison). It will feature lots of (actually intelligent) stuff by my friends and I.
Moving on, I am writing a huge research paper on the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 right now for history class, so all I will be reading for the next month are books related to that. I have fourteen of them lined up, I doubt I'll get through them all. I just finished reading A Testament of Revolution, which is an eyewitness account by Bela Liptak, who was a student participant in Budapest. It was a quick, engaging read: I would recommend it. I also read Hungary in the Cold War by Laszlo Borhi, which is a rather dry geopolitical analysis of the time leading up to the revolution. Soon I'll read Hungary '56 by Andy Anderson, which I had to get on loan from the Evergreen library. It is an analysis from a council communist perspective published by Black and Red (so I have wanted to read it for a while now). I'm excited.
Speaking of history class, I just read some of my professor's work in the "critical Marxist journal" Historical Materialism. I found it by accident in the UO library; it was a pleasant surprise. The topic was human nature and materialism. My prof (Fracchia) argues that it is too simplistic to pretend in the existence of a universal human essence or "human nature," and additionally rejects the extreme relativist notion that humanity is completely shaped by historical conditions. (This seems obvious to me, though.) Instead, he believes we should identify constants in human corporeal organization, rid ourselves of "human nature" terminology, and develop a taxonomic historical materialist theory. If one can understand the jargon, this all seems obvious as well- there are certain innate biological characteristics in all humans that change very slowly with time. He also appropriately quotes Marx multiple times saying that humans can change history, but not under conditions of their choosing. I don't really know what was so original about the piece, it all seemed obvious to me (though maybe some of it went over my head. The writing definitely bore the mark of academia). But it was cool getting to read some of his stuff, finally (I want to read his book about Marxism, Karl Korsch, materialism, etc, but it unfortunately is in German).
Um, that's all. Happy cinco de mayo; Karl Marx would be 188 today.
Moving on, I am writing a huge research paper on the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 right now for history class, so all I will be reading for the next month are books related to that. I have fourteen of them lined up, I doubt I'll get through them all. I just finished reading A Testament of Revolution, which is an eyewitness account by Bela Liptak, who was a student participant in Budapest. It was a quick, engaging read: I would recommend it. I also read Hungary in the Cold War by Laszlo Borhi, which is a rather dry geopolitical analysis of the time leading up to the revolution. Soon I'll read Hungary '56 by Andy Anderson, which I had to get on loan from the Evergreen library. It is an analysis from a council communist perspective published by Black and Red (so I have wanted to read it for a while now). I'm excited.
Speaking of history class, I just read some of my professor's work in the "critical Marxist journal" Historical Materialism. I found it by accident in the UO library; it was a pleasant surprise. The topic was human nature and materialism. My prof (Fracchia) argues that it is too simplistic to pretend in the existence of a universal human essence or "human nature," and additionally rejects the extreme relativist notion that humanity is completely shaped by historical conditions. (This seems obvious to me, though.) Instead, he believes we should identify constants in human corporeal organization, rid ourselves of "human nature" terminology, and develop a taxonomic historical materialist theory. If one can understand the jargon, this all seems obvious as well- there are certain innate biological characteristics in all humans that change very slowly with time. He also appropriately quotes Marx multiple times saying that humans can change history, but not under conditions of their choosing. I don't really know what was so original about the piece, it all seemed obvious to me (though maybe some of it went over my head. The writing definitely bore the mark of academia). But it was cool getting to read some of his stuff, finally (I want to read his book about Marxism, Karl Korsch, materialism, etc, but it unfortunately is in German).
Um, that's all. Happy cinco de mayo; Karl Marx would be 188 today.
posted by Sam at
9:24 PM
7 Comments:
If he doesn't believe that greed and self-interest are part of 'human nature', he should observe children for a little while. Unless he is just make a statement about semantics? RE: Jesus, Still it must have been cool to have pissed off so many people. Which, admittedly, is juvenile, but part of human nature.
By
Anonymous, at 4:43 PM
Hmmm. Trolling. Is a response justified? Perhaps. The mistaken assumption here is that because children are younger, they are therefore less prone to the effects of "society", and thus that observation of them, which proves their wickedness, somehow proves something. For one thing, there is nothing wrong with self-interest, indeed no one, especially those influenced by Marx, would deny this, in fact the struggle against the prevailing order will precisely have to be based on collective self-interest. Furthermore, I would go so far as to argue that there is nothing wrong with greed, and that the fullest expansion of greed would indeed be to negate capitalism and its narrow greed, full greed means greed for life, for health, for love, which is entirely antagonistic to capitalism.
Human nature is a fiction. When I observe small children, not only do I see "greed", but I also see sharing, caring, companionship, and free play. What are you looking for? This occurs even thugh smallest children have been immersed within the current social totality long enough to have absorbed its prejudices and concerns. Especially since that is the time in which the mind is most able to absorb such things.
By
Jake R., at 6:04 PM
Well, the issue of seemingly greedy children brings up the very point which Fracchia was making: that humans do have inherent biological needs, like food, which must be met according to a universal self-interest that all organisms exhibit. (BTW Self-interest=self preservation and there is no natural law that says personal greed always harms others). So if we wish to talk of a universal "human nature" we are talking biology and taxonomy, and that is it. And it is telling that even these inherent aspects of humans can be destroyed by historically specific conditions; in capitalism, people violate their own self-interests every day, so, really, nothing is universal. Again, this should be obvious and I feel stupid belaboring it.
By
Sam, at 1:58 PM
Oh, also, that Liptak book is great, an excellent history of those events. It is a great story and personal narrative. The history isn't as precise as other books on the topic, since it is a personal narrative, but it is still great. Of course we'd be more interested in, say the workers' councils than just narratives, which is why we should read many books on that event. The Anderson book is superb. Have you checked out what the CLR James and Raya Dunayevskaya crew wrote about those events? You should if you haven't yet.
By
Jake R., at 4:35 PM
Hmmm. Condascending response? Perhaps. My point was not about children, but about the denial of the existance of an universal human nature, self-interest just easily came to mind as an element of this nature.
greed
n 1: excessive desire to acquire or possess more (especially more material wealth) than one needs or deserves 2: reprehensible acquisitiveness; insatiable desire for wealth (personified as one of the deadly sins)
*from dictionary.com*
I'm sorry to hear that you think that greed is good, perhaps you could parse any word to make it sound like a good thing we all ought to approve of.
Sam, It was not clear to me that your comment in response was equivalent to your original blog post, but I can say I do agree with the wholly biological basis of human nature. btw, you know me, we shoveled gravel together.
By
Anonymous, at 5:20 PM
No way, you're the guy who lives in the St Johns area, right? Cool. Anyway, I think my response is consistent. There is no human "nature" as far as universal characteristics. There are "taxonomical" constants (is my professor's argument).
By
Sam, at 6:37 PM
"Our reversal of perspective on egoism n1, our detournement n2 of "greed," and the scandalous effect which this produces and is intended to produce in the prevailing consciousness, is no mere formal trick, and no arbitrary play on words. Words, and precisely because of their meanings, are a real partof history, of the "historical material," and of the historical process. To abandon them to their usurpers, to invent new words, or to use other words because of the difficulty of winning back the true, historic words, is to abandon the field to the enemy. It is a theoretical concession, and a practical concession, which we cannot afford. To do so would only add to the confusion, a confusion which, in part, forms the basis of the established order. Our reversal of perspective, on the contrary, is clarifying within the very terms of the confusion. It is already a revolutionary act at the level of the subjective conditions of revolution: the reversed perspective - the revolved perspective - is the perspective of revolution itself. Ideology is the sublime hustle. The use-value of ideology is as a tool for exploitation - the ideologue uses ideology to con you into letting him put his egoism above yours, in the name of altruism, morality, and the "general interest." Our winning back in a positive connotation of a word like "greed" or "selfishness" - the central, universal, and mutually agreed upon prejoratives of the two extreme representations of modern capitalism, private capitalist and state capitalist ideology, which try to confine the totality of possible opposition within the universe bounded by their polar pseudoopposition - is such an act because it locates precisely the point of their essential unity, the exact point of departure for a revolutionary movement which, by breaking away there, simultaneously, identically, and singularly breaks with both. No less is our expropriation of a word like "communism" such an act, for it is already an "expropriation of the expropriators." The "Free World" is not free and the "Communist World" is not communist." - From "The Right to be Greedy"
By
Jake R., at 8:23 PM
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